1.4.2-Shirley-keeldar
Brick!club 1.4.2: Première esquisse de deux figures louches I wrote two-and-a-half pages of this paper, which means I reward myself with a chapter summary. Because taking a break from pseudo-intellectual babbling about child custody arrangements to indulge in other pseudo-intellectual babbling about child custody arrangements is how I roll. This is the chapter where Hugo tries to describe the Thénardiers but actually wants to talk about trashy romances and naming conventions, so that’s what I’m also mostly going to talk about. I generally like to read about awful people, and I often like awful characters a lot, but the Thénardiers are pretty beyond the pale with their extensive child abuse and casual cruelty and constant petty crime that doesn’t actually benefit them. I was kind of entertained by the phrase "des âmes écrevisses reculant continuellement vers les ténèbres" because I’d only ever read “écrevisse” used in the literal sense — crayfish — before. Apparently it means “cowardly” by analogy to the retreating way crayfish move. Hapgood says “crab-like souls which are continually retreating towards the darkness” and, all right, I think the problem here might just be that I know literally nothing about crayfish. Moving on! A not particularly subtle reference to Thénardier’s actions at Waterloo. Yep, par for the course. I was going to do some research about the historical novels and writers referenced in the this chapter, but (a)that’s hard and (b)it’s a lot of trouble to go to when it’s just Hugo being a jerk about trashy literature rotting your brain. Sure, art is nice, yes, your figurative language is very nice, pat yourself on the back, but sometimes trashy is fun. Besides, the main consequence reading these novels seems to have had on Mme Thénardier is to encourage her to give her kids fancy names. I’m going to go on the record here saying that’s really not so bad. I did look up Ducray-Duminil, because he’s mentioned by name, and he seems to have been entertaining, at least. I mean, he wrote a book called “Fanfan and Lolotte, the Story of Two Children Abandoned on a Desert Island”. Wikipedia advises me that his style may not have been everything you could wish for, but I doubt any of the people being massively entertained by his books cared. Don’t we… want to encourage literacy? As long as people enjoy reading something, that’s already half a victory. And, anyway, Hugo is pretty down with lower class people having fancy names, as witnessed by the end of this chapter, which I’m pretty sure is actually the point of it: "It isn’t rare these days that a cowherd’s boy is named Arthur, Alfred, or Alphonse, and that a viscount — if there are still viscounts — is named Thomas, Pierre, or Jacques. This displacement that gives the "elegant" name to the plebeian and the country name to the aristocrat is nothing else but an eddy of equality. The irresistible penetration of new inspiration is here as everywhere. Beneath this apparent discord, there is a great and profound thing: the French Revolution." You’re a bit all right, Hugo. Tomorrow: child abuse child abuse and more child abuse is there anything else happening I can’t hear it over the sound of POOR SWEET BABY COSETTE